Was that a 64GB Zune HD Microsoft was touting? Why yes, yes, it was.
(Thinking about the Zune HD reminds me to wonder: What’s its future, especially with the similar Windows Phone 7 Series in the offing? You gotta think that maybe Microsoft will release a Zune that’s very much like a Windows Phone 7 handset but without the phone part, thereby extending the platform in an iPod Touch-like manner…)
The Sonos S5 ($399) was one of my 2009 boxes of the year. With good reason. Sonos is a sophisticated but easy to implement and easy to operate whole-home audio solution. Featuring content from both our local music collections and various online sources. The S5 broke new ground in the Sonos lineup by integrating rich, powerful speakers into their connected receiver. Sonos is not an inexpensive solution (especially since you won’t stop with just one room), but it’s clearly the best at what it does. Yet, what’s next?
A Sonos email survey I received a few days ago alluded to several interesting expansion possibilities. As I still have a loaner unit on hand, I’ve got a few ideas….
I’m at the amazing South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, where I ran into a couple of folks from the Rhapsody music service who gave me a quick peek of something I’ve been waiting for since Rhapsody hit the iPhone in September: an update to the iPhone app that lets you download music over 3G or Wi-Fi to the phone so plays directly from the handset rather than streaming over the Internet. The company says it’s finishing it up and planning to submit it to the App Store shortly.
Caching music locally guarantees that a song won’t die in midplay if your Internet connection flakes out. It lets you listen in places where the Internet doesn’t go, like most airplanes. And it uses way less battery power. Basically, it should make a $15-per-month Rhapsody to Go subscription look a lot more attractive. (The usual rules of subscription music apply: You can listen all you want as long as you pay the monthly fee, but if you cancel service all the albums you’ve added to your collection go away.)
Once Rhapsody for iPhone does offline music–I’m assuming Apple will approve it without delay–the one feature it’ll lack that you’d want is the ability to play in the background while you use another app. That’ll only happen if Apple enables third-party multitasking. But Rhapsody says that it plans to add music downloading soon to its Android app, which already runs fine in the background.
Here’s a video preview of the iPhone app from Rhapsody:
Demented genius entrepreneur Michael Robertson thinks that Apple bought Lala to help it quickly offer a service that puts iTunes users’ existing music collections in the cloud. Makes sense that he’d think that makes sense: He founded MP3.com, which offered a similar service almost exactly a decade ago. (It was wonderful–and the music companies successfully sued it out of business almost immediately.)
Some of us are a wee bit fixated on the fate of nifty music service Lala now that it’s part of Apple. Peter Burroughs has a story in BusinessWeek with a hopeful-sounding headline: “Apple Will Let Google Continue Using Lala.” It refers to the agreement between Google and Lala that puts links to free Lala music (and purchase options) in some of Google’s music-related search results.
After reading Burroughs’ story, I’m not so sure how hopeful to feel. Google’s RJ Pittman told him that Apple and Google “are agreeing to continue to leave the service as is” and that Lala will “remain live for the forseeable future.” But it’s Apple that’s going to determine Lala’s future–and Apple spokesman Steve Downling’s only comment to Burroughs was that Apple doesn’t comment on acquisitions.
So I’m left with all the same questions I’ve had since news of the acquisition broke.
How much (if any) of Lala will make its way into iTunes and/or other Apple services such as MobileMe? Lala lets you buy streaming only-songs for a dime apiece (and listen to them via an interface that already looks like iTunes in your browser); it gives you access to streaming versions of songs you possess in MP3 form; and it has some cool community features that let you peek at what your pals are listening to. A Lala-ized iTunes could be wonderful, but it’s also possible that Apple bought Lala for its engineering talent, not its service.
Will the Lala site and service continue on? It’s hard to believe that Apple would just leave it as. Over time, it’s surely either going to get sucked into iTunes, or cease to exist.
Will Apple put Lala’s impressive iPhone app on the iPhone App Store? (“Approve” doesn’t feel like the right word when you’re talking about a piece of software now owned by Apple.) It’s not necessarily a terrible sign if it doesn’t show up–Apple may merely be so excited about the app that it’s working on an Apple-ized version.
Will the Google deal continue on? I hope so, but I won’t be traumatized if it doesn’t–in part because Google has a similar arrangement with iLike.
Apple almost certainly isn’t going to share any of its intentions for Lala–whatever happens will just happen. Building any of the service’s capabilities into iTunes would take a while, so I’m not going to feel downright pessimistic until (A) any aspects of Lala in its current form go away, and /or (B) major new releases of iTunes and/or the iPhone arrive with no signs of Lala influence. In the short term, no news may well be good news…
Good grief, it’s almost 2010! For the second year, we’re asking you to make bold predictions about where tech-related products, companies, technologies, and people will go in the coming year–and are offering a prize to encourage your contributions.
This year, the prize is a biggie: It’s Olive’s Olive 4 Hi-Fi Music Server, which lets you convert your entire collection of CDs into high-quality digital form for listening over your stereo or across your network.The Olive has a color touchscreen; a 500GB hard drive and a built-in CD drive; and Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and digital and analog audio outputs. It’s a $1499 value and is provided courtesy of Olive.
Rumor on the Internet today has it that Apple is in “advanced ” talks to buy one of my favorite music services, Lala. Even if the conversation is real, it doesn’t mean it’ll amount to anything. But anyone who’s ever used Lala can grasp why Steve Jobs & Co. might be tempted to make it their own.
The company has an oddball history that includes a period as a CD-swapping service and a foray into radio, but for over a year, it’s focused on pretty much being what iTunes might be if it were an entirely Web-based service. You can buy streaming-only songs for a dime apiece, but the first listen to any song is free. Like the late, lamented original MP3.com, Lala replicates your music collection on its servers so you can listen to it anywhere–but Lala does so much more easily…and it does so legally. It wraps everything up in a user interface that looks like iTunes’ browser-based twin brother, and adds hooks to services such as Facebook and Google.
After much delay, the company recently finished work on a new product that would make its ties to Apple even closer: an iPhone app that brings most of the Web-based service to Apple’s smartphone. Lala has submitted it to Apple but it’s not yet approved for App Store distribution. However, it gave me a prerelease copy for review, and it’s as spectacular as the Web version–all of a sudden, the iPhone’s relatively skimpy memory isn’t nearly as much of an issue, since you can stream all the music you’ve got in iTunes on a PC or Mac to your phone. You can also listen to and buy songs from Lala’s 8-million song store. It’s all surprisingly fast for a streaming service, and it even caches recent music you’ve listened to so you’re not completely out of luck if you don’t have an Internet connection.
I’m fond of multiple iPhone music apps (Slacker is one favorite), but Lala is the most interesting one to date.
So why, specifically, might Apple want to snag Lala? Cnet’s Greg Sandoval gives two reasons: Lala founder Bill Nguyen is a smart entrepreneur (true) and Lala’s billing system might save Apple a ton of cash (possibly true, but profoundly tedious). I’d love to think that Apple might merge all of Lala’s goodness into iTunes itself, creating a seamless experience across Mac, PC, iPhone, and iPod. But I’m also concerned that if the service itself isn’t what has Apple excited, it might just go away. (It may be the first iPhone music app that’s good enough that it could cut into sales of songs on iTunes.)
After the jump, some screen shots of Lala for iPhone in action. One way or another, I hope you get to try it soon…
This is…odd. The Beatles are finally releasing their remastered catalog in digital form–both high-quality FLAC files and 320-Kbps MP3s. But they’re not selling it on iTunes or any other online music merchant. They’re releasing it as a limited edition of 30,000 16GB USB drives that fit into an “exquisitely crafted” commemorative apple.
The box set includes fourteen albums, fourteen short documentaries, cover art, and expanded liner notes, and will go for $280. That’s more than the recent CD release, and more than you’ll pay when this stuff does become available for online purchase. (Most of the Rolling Stones’ albums go for eight bucks a piece as downloads.)
The ordering page for the apple doesn’t say anything about whether it’s easy to get the music onto an iPod or other device. I hope it at least doesn’t do anything to make it difficult…
Why the unorthodox means of going digital? I can think of a few reasons.
The lads are used to commanding a premium price for their music, which is tough online. (Sticking it on a USB drive lets them hawk it as a limited edition, but every digital download is, by definition, an unlimited edition.)
Their business model as a corporate entity essentially consists of selling their fans the same music over and over–for more than forty years now! The limited-edition apple gives ’em the ability to do it at least one more time before it goes online. I’m already suspicious that some sort of non-limited edition USB version is on its way.
Not being available for download has become a Beatles trademark. The apple lets them go digital while keeping the tradition alive. And the longer they string out the saga, the bigger a deal it’ll be when they do go online.
A couple of predictions:
The Beatles’ music will be available from the major download stores within eighteen months–and maybe a lot sooner than that.
Tragically, the fabled Apple press event in which Steve Jobs’ ‘one more thing” is the Beatles and Paul McCartney and/or Ringo Starr take the stage to make music won’t ever happen. One day, the music will just be there, and we’ll eventually forget it hadn’t been all along.
So would you spend $280 for USBeatles?
Google search launches music feature.
Once again, Google-FCC correspondence.
Google navigation for iPhone, maybe.
Surprisingly sensible dual-screen laptop.
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A little over a year ago, I wrote about Lala’s extremely nifty music service and mentioned a version for the iPhone which the company said would be available soon. I couldn’t wait to use it…but “soon” never arrived.
But it sounds like “soon” may come…soon. Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk reports that Lala expects its iPhone app to be available in the iTunes App Store by the end of the year. It’s contingent on Apple approving it, of course, and I can’t quite tell from Eliot’s story whether Lala has already submitted the app or just expects to do so shortly. But it sounds like it’s Lala for the iPhone with all the goodness I saw back in 2008: The ability to buy streaming-only songs for a dime apiece and downloadable ones at cheap prices–and to stream music that’s already in your library from Lala’s servers for free.
Lala told Wired that the app will also cache the last few hundred songs you’ve listened to on the iPhone, which would help address the one major limitation of music streaming: It doesn’t work when your device isn’t connected.
Lala’s been in the news a lot this week: On Wednesday, it announced an app that lets Facebook users give Lala music to their pals, and it has news coming next week that reportedly involves its music showing up in Google results.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as a music service that’ll make everybody happy all the time–at least not until someone comes up with one that lets you stream or download all the music you want and keep it forever for free. But between iTunes and Sirius XM and Rhapsody and Slacker and Pandora and umpteen other services, iPhone owners have access to more music via more types of services than users of any other handheld device. Now if Apple would just make it possible to listen to music delivered via non-Apple apps in the background while you’re using other apps…
